5 easy ways to grow your audience

A lot of people come into the blogging world with the idea that they’ll have thousands of readers, advertisers and sponsors in a month. However that’s not how it works and many writers are put off when they don’t get a decent following to their blog.

I’m a big believer that you should do what you love whether you have a big audience or not, however it is always nice to know you have peoples support and user generated content, or UGC, always comes in handy!

So for those of you who are looking to raise your websites stats, I've come up with five easy ways you can grow your audience!

1: Learn how to engage your audience

By this I mean not only learning what your reader wants, but also how to deliver it to them. Firstly to know what your reader wants you’ll have to know your reader. To do this you need to create your target audience, are you interested in beauty, fashion, movies, cooking? Whatever it is stick to your theme as much as you can.

This way you will gain a set demographic audience, e.g. cooking blogs will gain chefs, cooking enthusiasts and domestic goddesses/gods. A beauty blog will attract make-up artists, beauticians and those looking for advice in their beauty routine.

Once you have done this you can target your audience directly. A super easy way of doing this is sharing your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Bloglovin’ etc. But just writing ‘check out my new post’ is not enough. If you are going to promote your site sell what you’re writing to the reader, e.g. “Check out my review of the new Bobbi Brown make-up brushes” or “Want to know what I thought of the new Bobbi Brown make-up brushes? Then take a look at my blog”.

This way you will target an audience who are searching for key words or phrases as well as your normal readers and followers. This will also make your blog posts more search engine friendly – this brings me onto the second point.

2: Do not fear the hashtag

I cannot tell you how important hash-tagging is when it comes to blogging! So many people have this strange idea that using hashtags is frowned upon and people will judge you for using it, this is incorrect, plain and simple.

Just sharing your latest post isn't enough and using hash tags is the best way to target your audience directly. You can’t expect people to just miraculously see your website, you have to put your work out there for people to be able to see it.

So if you are a beauty blogger try sharing your latest link along with a catchy line and the hash tags: #bblogger #BobbiBrown #beautyblog if that is what you are writing about. Using relevant hashtags is the easiest way to get your chosen audiences to click your links. It will again help with search engine optimising.

At the same time don’t go crazy with the hashtags. You don’t #need #to #hashtag #every #single #word. As you can see it just looks messy and unprofessional – so not the look you are going for.

3: Invest time and effort

Getting people to click your links isn't all you need to be a success though. You want them to click on a post and then enjoy it so much they follow or subscribe, or at least read a bit more of your work!

To do this you have to make sure you are providing good quality content. Three paragraph posts with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors will put your readers off and portray you as an unreliable source. I advise writing your post on a programme like Microsoft Word instead of directly onto your blog, this way you can run it through a reliable spell check as well as the standard one on your internet browser.

Also if you can get someone else to read over your post before you publish it you should. Just because it makes sense to you does not mean it will make sense to everyone so getting a friend or family member on board to be your copy-taster is a good idea.

The same goes for pictures. If you display a blurry image where it is hard to make out the subject then people won’t want to look any further than your first post. You don’t need an expensive DLSR to take good photos, all the pictures on my site are taken with the IPhone 5c. All you need to take a decent picture is good lighting (preferably natural light), a plain background that won’t distract or hide the pictures subject and a steady hand.

These factors along with a clean, non-cluttered blog template are sure to keep the reader’s attention that you have worked so hard to attract.

4: Make your blog attractive

This is such an easy step to take but one bloggers often neglect. The best way to get people to read your blog is to make it look good. Both Blogger and WordPress offer hundreds of free templates that you can choose for your blog to make it look more attractive. All you have to do is select design and the sites will guide you from there.

Alternatively you can use sites like Pipdig who offer to redesign your whole blog for you. You can choose one of their standard designs or a custom job, their prices currently start from around £29.

5: Be a team player

This is perhaps the most important part of being a blogger. You can’t become successful without help. If you are one of these people who expect others to write on your posts, follow you and share your work without doing anything in return then you will not get far in the blogging world.

Blogging is a social game, it’s designed to bring people together and share ideas so you can’t expect everyone to love you and your blog if you don’t return that love to an extent.

Try following other bloggers, commenting on their posts and sharing their work and most will return the favour. This way you will grow your readership and probably make some great friends in the process. I know I have made a lot of close friends through blogging and that was by striking up conversations on blogs and Twitter.

Blogging has a strong community and it is important to be a part of this community instead of isolating yourself from it to seem cool – it won’t work and you will get left behind.

I hope this post has helped any blogging new-comers or those of you just wanting to grow your existing audience! Let me know in a comment below if the post helped with your blogging experience or if you have any more tips for newbie bloggers!